What my life looked like two years ago Computer More Computer Siting at home, doing nothing useful but being lazy and passively consuming things (TV) Occasionally going out with friends, drinking beer or something. Going a few times a year into mountains which always felt amazing but also needed a lot of self-convincement to really go out. This resulted in a breakdown of the sense of life,…

This project I had in mind for over a year already. It would be my dream to build my own bed and the concept was shaped over one year until I realized that this year I would have to make that real or it would never happen. So I started getting serious about the planning, draw construction sketches and talked with several people who know more than me about wood construction. This already was an…

Do you know the feeling of being overwhelmed by all the work and tasks you have to do today? There are times where I manage all this very good and then there are times where I struggle a lot with “getting everything done”. But when I really think about what is important, what needs to be finished today it’s usually very little. If I need to choose two things to finish on a day, it’s doable. The problem…

Today I came across an article about a study (PDF) that found out that just 100 companies are responsible for 71% of global emissions. “There is a hard limit to how much of an effect lifestyle changes alone can have.”—Baldur Bjarnason on Mastodon The source who lead me to this interesting article also mentioned there’d be a “hard limit to how much of an effect lifestyle changes alone can have”. Th…

Today I got up early and instead of cooking a coffee and then sit in front of my screen to read emails I went out to the forest. There’s nothing more relaxing than the early hours in a forest, especially in autumn when fog is around and there’s only nature and you.

Today I read Apple’s Environment Responsibility Report 20181. I’m amazed how detailed it is, how readable, understandable and exemplary it is. It’s not just a official report that is necessary. Instead, they chose to make it great for everyone and use it as marketing instrument. Instead, they chose to make it great for everyone and use it as marketing instrument. And I like that because it makes…

When Apple presented the iPhone Xr this year I was tempted to buy it as soon as possible. This was in total contrast to what I wanted to do before the announcement—not buying a new phone this year. Every two years my contract with Vodafone renews and gives me the chance to get a new smartphone. And every time Apple holds a keynote they achieve to convince people that their new product is more a…

On Wednesday I was asking a colleague what his plans for today are and he replied that he’s on his way to go surfing but would have about 15 minutes to talk about our project now if I like. I thought that’s way enough time to talk about task management etc and called him while he was on the bus to the beach. But I was wrong; he didn’t wanted to talk about tasks but about our problem of the last three…

The Uber CEO Dara Khosrowshahi says in this Recode Code 2018 Video that he wants Uber to be the Amazon of transportation. It baffles me that a billion dollar company cannot come up with a better vision than to compare itself and copy a concept from Amazon. Shira Ovide from Bloomberg tends to agree but Uber still is valued billions of Dollars and while not profitable at all, still gets a lot of…

You in business? What are you doing to last? Not to grow. Not to gain. Not to take. Not to win. But to last? —Jason Fried in Outlasting It describes the way I build software and websites since ever — building a thing that lasts for as long as I can imagine it to last. In the past, I related this to how I create a codebase so that it lasts for years and will be reliable and readable by other peo…

I’m collecting a list of companies or products that are not only over-financed hipster brands but instead have a real purpose as a company to succeed and be sustainable from the start. Ideally, the companies or products should also care about ethics and mostly about the human side of their clients. As an example, the outdoor company Patagonia would be an example of a sustainable company which c…

As you can already see this site has gotten a new look yesterday. But not only a new look but a new technical basis and a new content strategy. In the past I had a website showing what I do as developer. But I am much more than a developer and people want to know about it as well. In times where you know a lot of people virtually from Twitter or other social media networks, it’s even more i…

Today I read an interview which I really enjoyed. It contained some great inspiration tipps but one thing is still stuck in my head: “I … start my day by meditating. … I then rush to get to work by 9am” —Interview Maria Gonzalez from Slack at InterfaceLovers Please don’t ruin your meditation practice immediately afterwards. Try to establish a day led by your meditation practice—calm, focused, reflected.…

I’m a big fan of decentralized solutions and advocate for them a lot. But the claim by technologists for building decentralized services as a response to unethical behavior is wrong. If we try to solve the underlying humanitarian issue with technology, nothing changes. Decentralized services are a good idea to share responsibility and own your data. But they’re not going to prevent people from abu…

Facebook’s Press Release after the Cambridge Analytica story unfolded is one perfect way to show how the whole company thinks. While it’s clear that Facebook didn’t follow their claim to “Protecting people’s information is the most important thing we do at Facebook.”, they declare it Cambridge Analytica’s fault that they used data that Facebook and their users gave them unnecessarily. The whole story is abou…

When you build something, it’s hard to decide whether it’s good enough or not to release it to the public. But improving something is even harder due to the infinity of possible solutions. This is known as the common issue of not being able to validate a change binary: A common approach to problem solving is to consider it binary. Either you’ve fixed the issue or you haven’t. Some problems fit that do…

Here’s a bold statement: Using acronyms is hurting people. Elon Musk already declared a company rule effective for all employees in 2010, effectively ending the use of acronyms and appreviations for the entire company: “Individually, a few acronyms here and there may not seem so bad, but if a thousand people are making these up, over time the result will be a huge glossary that we have to issue to …

Katie Womersley: “(…) our global spread means almost 24/7, Slack is a hub of activity and people feel they’re missing out on work. This is especially tough on our Asia-Pacific teammates, who end up left out of discussions and conversations, and folks with responsibilities who needed to work different hours and be offline during parts of their workday (like parents!).” I’m so familiar with this feeling. …

Ethical Design is a term often used by various people in the past year and now even predicted as a trend for 2018. Interestingly, when you read more about what it means you get a variety of responses. It lasts from the user experience over sustainability to business concepts. And in fact, it’s a mixture of all and cannot be a trend—instead it must be a requirement for us as human beings. When we mee…